


hear a pin drop

by Aesoleucian



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Natori is a creep and always has been, therefore in this story he is the villain he always deserved to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: Hiiragi discovers what it means to choose someone not because you feel you owe them, but because you want to.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is one of the few stories I have ever posted everything I've actually written so far! what an adventure! I just want my friend to be able to read it and praise me instead of keeping it to myself.

“I’ll tell you about it later. After this is all over. Please.”

So that’s what it is.

Hiiragi has been pushing all day, gently to see what she can find out. In her own mind she’s still undecided as to whether she wanted to tell her master—but she knows that to Natsume it looked like she was fishing for information to give to him. Yet to her master she seemed to be on Natsume’s side. That’s why he didn’t send her to follow Natsume after they left Takuma’s house. Each side perceives her to be with the other.

And Hiiragi herself? She doesn’t know.

Her master still trusts her enough to let her listen, although she knows more than he does already about the Book of Friends. She has heard rumors, heard ayakashi spit the name _Natsume Reiko_ , heard a few times the excitement that this Reiko had returned to Nanatsuji. When her Natsume—this Natsume—introduced himself, she briefly wondered whether there was a connection, but she never pursued it.

Still, she can’t forget what her master said: _perhaps it's something that gentle, reckless Natsume cannot be allowed to possess_. He is going to take it at the first opportunity, not by force but by gentle persuasion. He doesn’t understand his own power—he never understood why she would follow him, and he doesn’t understand how little choice Natsume will have if he asks.

“The Book of Friends is my treasure,” Natsume tells him, surprisingly resolute. “I’m the only one who can return the names.”

“I see,” says her master, although she doesn’t think he does see. “The Book of Friends. That’s an interesting name. And you’ve been dealing with something so difficult all by yourself.”

She braces herself, and watches Natsume deflect, demur. “No, it’s really not troublesome.”

“It would be better if such a dangerous thing is burned,” her master murmurs, tilting his face up to watch the ash still falling from the sky like dark snow.

She sees Natsume swallow, and pauses on the edge of picking up another piece of half-burned paper. “But I won’t,” he says finally.

“You should really—”

“Please don’t ask me again, Natori-san. It’s something I need to do.”

Her master shakes his head. “Natsume, I know how hard it’s been for you all this time, without support or guidance. Now, I’m able to offer you that support and guidance, as someone who has been dealing with ayakashi for a many, many years. They will keep coming after you, and they only need to get lucky once for me to lose my dear friend. You need to be lucky every time. Forever.”

Natsume is wavering. He doesn’t know how to resist an attack disguised as caring. He still doesn’t know that there are many different kinds of care, many different kinds of love. Hiiragi puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “You should trust him, master.”

Her master stares at her for a long time before he ducks his head and smiles a self-deprecating smile; his hand comes up to rub at the nape of his neck, textbook embarrassment at a small social misstep. “I’m sorry, Natsume. I’m just very concerned for you. Forgive me.”

He turns to leave, beckons with one hand, and his shiki follow.

 

It isn’t over.

 

That night her master tells Sasago, in a low voice when he thinks Hiiragi is elsewhere, to go now and take the book. “He’ll thank me some day,” he says softly, sad-eyed. Sasago doesn’t want or need any justification—he’s trying to justify it to himself. Hiiragi leaves when his back is turned and takes the alternate route to Nanatsuji. She arrives just minutes ahead of Sasago and stands stiffly at the front of the house.

“Move,” Sasago rasps.

“I will not.”

“You’d defy our master?”

Hiiragi sets her chin so that the horns of her mask point subtly forward in challenge, although they are much less impressive than Sasago’s. “When he is wrong? Yes, I’d defy him. It is a shiki’s duty to protect their master, even from foolish decisions.”

Sasago hisses, like water dropped in a hot pan. “A shiki’s duty is to _obey_ their master. Move aside.”

In answer, Hiiragi unsheathes her sword.

Sasago prowls around her, and she turns watchfully to follow. Sasago lunges, and Hiiragi strikes her with the flat of the sword, making her hiss again and draw back, baring her teeth. It’s a standoff, they both know. Sasago will not get through, and Hiiragi will not kill her. Hiiragi sees her realize this, set her teeth in a snarl, and then dissolve into smoke, off to tell their master. Hiiragi should go to him too, to show that she is still faithful. But she is not feeling faithful right now.

She leaps lightly up onto the roof, edges open the window where she can smell Natsume. He’s still asleep, breathing slow and deep in the comforting way humans do when they are furthest from waking. The cat—Madara—is curled on top of the blanket, and he opens one green eye to look at her. He is asking, she knows, for an explanation.

“My master sent Sasago to take the Book of Friends tonight,” she says softly. “I know you’re an excellent bodyguard on your own—”

Madara tucks his nose back between his paws. “I’d rather sleep. You can guard him if you want. I won’t stop you.”

“You trust me, knowing that my master is ordering his shiki to take the book?”

He opens one eye again, gleaming much more brightly than any external light would allow, and then closes it. Moments later he begins to fake-snore.

Hiiragi sighs and leans against the windowsill. “Stay with him tomorrow.” And she settles in for a long night.

 

She leaves before Natsume wakes up. She still has hope that this can be resolved without ever shaking his faith in her master, as little as Natori deserves it. Natsume deserves to have that faith.

When she returns to her master’s apartment the sun has already risen and he is pacing instead of eating. He freezes in place when he sees her, eyes wide. “You should eat something. It’s important to take care of your health.”

“Hiiragi,” he says. “Is it true what Sasago told me?”

“Do you think she would lie to you?” asks Hiiragi, standing with her arms folded, legs planted solidly. Before the argument even begins she is rooting herself in place, immovable.

“I’d hoped she was mistaken somehow,” he murmurs. Then he looks up, eyes flashing. “You need to be on my side, Hiiragi. A shiki and their master are united. I can’t be wondering whether you’re going to betray me again. Either obey me, or I’ll be forced to dismiss you.”

“Dismiss me, then.”

Her master—if only for a few more minutes—gapes. Fool that he is, he wasn’t expecting her to call his bluff. But a single moment of kindness over a decade ago, even when she was most desperate for it, does not outweigh all the harm his mindset has caused and will probably continue to cause. Unlike him, Natsume truly is devoted to helping ayakashi. Natori doesn’t even seem to understand that burning the Book of Friends would kill dozens of them. Or he doesn’t care. “J-just… Just let me get your name,” he mumbles, and turns aside to the spellwork room, all his certainty and determination gone.

She stands silent during the ritual, watching him fumble and stutter like a much younger exorcist who has never done this before. She supposes he hasn’t. Urihime has been with him for eight years now, and Sasago six, and as far as she knows they are the only shiki he has ever had.

Finally he holds out the bloodied tablet, and she automatically extends her hand to take it. “Thank you,” she says.

He sighs. “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to guard Natsume. Apparently he needs protection.”

Natori flushes. She turns around and walks out.


	2. Chapter 2

Natsume does not particularly like having a second bodyguard—he seems to object on principle to the idea that he needs guarding. “Please tell Natori-san that I’m fine,” he says. “He doesn’t have to do this. I already have Nyanko-sensei anyway.”

So she shadows him from a greater distance and lets him assume what he will. Still he seems frustrated.

“You’re his shiki, not mine! I don’t know why he’s so set on having you follow me!”

It may be time to tell him. She sighs noiselessly. “He didn’t ask me to. In fact I no longer work for him.”

“I’m _not_ going to contract you—”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. You are a different kind of person than he is.”

There’s a moment of silence, during which Natsume looks down, out the window by his shoulder at the birds sitting on the edge of the roof. “You… don’t work for Natori-san any more?”

“I told you. He isn’t like you. His aims have been aligning with mine less and less. For a shiki with a strong will, he can be… a less-than-perfect master.” Natsume frowns, as if he still doesn’t understand. It’s her fault, really, for trying to put it delicately. “He ordered Sasago to take your book while you slept. I stopped her.”

His eyes widen. “Natori-san wouldn’t—”

But he stops himself. Perhaps he has always known that Natori-san _would_ , in fact.

“Are you going to tell me not to see him any more?” he asks softly, after a long time.

“I’m not your master. I certainly can’t tell you what to do.” She’s trying not to care. She’s trying not to care.

He looks down again.

Hiiragi continues to follow him at a distance.

She sits on the roof of his house at night, watching the darkness for her former comrades. She paces the roof of his school during the day, and intercepts more than one ayakashi up to no good. She follows him to the river to watch him fishing with his human friends. Tonight, a party of ayakashi is climbing up onto the roof, clearly headed as so many others have been for Natsume’s window.

She jumps down to plant herself in their path. They stop and stare, and she stares too, because they all seem to be clutching bottles and gourds. “What is your business with Natsume?”

“We’re here for a party!” says a cyclops, echoed by the bull standing next to him. “Don’t worry, Natsume-sama is expecting us.” He puffs up his chest and shakes his gourd. It sloshes like it’s half full, and he smells drunk.

Hiiragi doesn’t think it’s her responsibility to bar drunk ayakashi from Natsume’s house, but on the other hand she can’t imagine him enjoying a drinking party. “Is he expecting to be glad to see you?” she asks. “He’s probably sleeping.”

The window slides open, and Natsume leans out of it. “Don’t worry about it, Hiiragi, I’m used to it by now. I didn’t ask you to keep ayakashi out anyway. That’s what I have Sensei for.” Hiiragi steps aside, and the ayakashi step up to climb in the window. “But you might as well come in too. I hate to think of you out on the roof listening to us having a party.”

Hiiragi comes in last and shuts the window. It certainly can’t hurt to understand more about the people Natsume chooses to let into his home. She steps discreetly into the corner, ignored by all the ayakashi except one. This ayakashi has the form of a human woman in a kimono patterned with maple leaves, tapping ash out of her pipe onto the tatami. “Is she giving you trouble, Natsume? Do you want me to get rid of her?”

Natsume frowns, rubbing absently at the ash and working it deeper into the mat. “She’s a friend, Hinoe. Please be polite to her. She’s decided to guard me, although I don’t really need it.” He looks up at her, ignoring the fact that Madara and several of the other ayakashi are dancing around him, spilling enough sake that his room will still smell of it come morning. “I know you’re a guardian by nature, but I’m sure you can find something more worth guarding than me, since I already have a bodyguard.”

Hinoe narrows her eyes speculatively, never taking them off Hiiragi as she snaps the sake out of the cyclops’ hand and starts pouring some into a shallow cup. “You’re right, Natsume, Madara is quite enough for you. Maybe she could guard Yatsuhara. Doesn’t your boy live there?”

“My boy?” Natsume echoes. “You mean Tanuma? Ah, you’re right, I do worry about him… He’s so easily affected by ayakashi.” He turns a questioning gaze on Hiiragi, who shrugs.

“If it’s important to you, Natsume, I’ll guard him.”

She stands in the corner, arms folded, trying to ignore the steadily more drunk ayakashi as Hinoe questions her about where she came from and why. It’s clear that Hinoe at least is suspicious of her, but Hiiragi doesn’t have the patience (or social acumen, any more) to give more than one-word answers. Eventually Hinoe leaves her alone and starts organizing some kind of party game.

When Natsume’s desk clock reads one in the morning, Hiiragi bodily lifts the ayakashi, who aren’t coordinated enough to fight back, and drops them out the window. Outside she can hear them sliding off the roof and hitting the ground. She’s half-expecting Natsume to protest, but he just rubs his knuckles into his eyes and says, “Can you throw Sensei out too? I don’t know if I’ll be able to fall asleep with the way he smells.”

Madara is much, much heavier than he looks. Still, he’s essentially a large pillow. When she drops him out and shuts the window, she hears the laughter outside cut off as he lands on one of the ayakashi who are no doubt sprawled in front of the house.

Natsume sighs and starts picking up the empty bottles and gourds, and putting them into his closet. Then moves his futon back out of the corner where he hastily folded it, turns off the light, and lies down.  Hiiragi watches the dark wall across the room until Natsume’s breaths become deep and even, and then silently she gathers the empty sake containers and takes them out to the forest behind the house. When she checks, the ayakashi have moved, and the front is quiet as well. Satisfied, she returns to Natsume’s room. This last night she’ll guard him, since she threw his other bodyguard out the window.

One of the best things about having an unblinking mask is that even when she closes her eyes, she is still watching.

 

When Natsume begins to stir, she slips out of the house and walks with her long shadow leading her to Yatsuhara. She crosses a bridge over a small stream and follows the road to a temple complex where already a priest is awake and sweeping the courtyard. He’s wearing glasses, like Natori did when he was out on a job, and briefly Hiiragi wonders if he is using them for the same purpose; one of the mid-grade youkai did mention last night that he is an exorcist. But when Hiiragi walks by him, he doesn’t even pause in his sweeping.

The temple itself has only old wards, so degraded they wouldn’t keep out anything larger than a weasel. She knows this because a weasel stops to chat: “Are you new here? Checking out that old place? It was abandoned for a long time, and the wards are so close to being properly down! But I still can’t get onto the grounds.” It puffs up its cheeks angrily. “But enough about me! I’ve never seen you before.”

“I’m Hiiragi,” she says. “I’m the new guardian of Yatsuhara.”

“Oh! A guardian!” The weasel looks over its shoulder, flustered. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had a guardian before! Stay right there.”

It runs off into the forest, leaving Hiiragi to stand surveying the temple, not wanting to be rude. It has always been useful to have local youkai on her side—certainly none of them were willing to talk to Natori. For a period of perhaps a year during her imprisonment there was a young bird who brought her water and hung flowers off the horns of her mask. He disappeared at some point, and she never found out what happened to him, because it was still decades before she was freed.

The weasel youkai returns holding a small bundle wrapped in leaves, and offers it to her. To be polite she unwraps it; onigiri. “Thank you,” she says.

The weasel nods quickly as if embarrassed and says, “I’m Tokitachi. Um, good luck with your guarding!” And it runs off into the trees again.

Hiiragi smiles under her mask, and then lifts it to take a bite of the onigiri. She hasn’t been offered food in a very long time, not since she guarded the mountain she was born on. It brings back a little of what she was, a little of the feeling of being responsible for other lives. It isn’t at all the same as being a shiki for a human. Humans never understand what it means to be a guardian.

Maybe Natsume does. Maybe he will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiiragi is so incredibly cool and dreamy that I imagine when she was a mountain guardian the first time around, in addition to offerings from humans she would have lots of minor youkai admirers. Yes... I am one of those minor youkai admirers. Tokitachi is my self-insert.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> completely! unedited! wahoo! I'm starting to understand how other authors who write this way all the time have such erratic update schedules. personally I do not enjoy it.

Hiiragi slips into a routine, still familiar after what might be fifty or sixty years. She outlines the area of Yatsuhara, a sprawling township of perhaps two thousand ayakashi and half as many humans: first she must know the place she protects, its bounds and its secrets. Any guardian knows that they must ingratiate themself with the land, and in the absence of threats the land wants to be worked—failing that, it wants to be walked. So Hiiragi walks, circling through woods and fields and always coming back to the temple where Natsume’s boy Tanuma can often be found.

Sometimes Natsume visits; Hiiragi gives him a respectful nod and goes elsewhere. More and more often she finds offerings at the abandoned shrine a few miles from the temple, and some of the bolder local youkai give her gifts in person. Most of them are food or sake, but a few are little trinkets, tiny carvings and ornaments and protective charms. She makes sure to wear them on the hilt or the strap of her sword, pinned to her belt or on her sleeve. Each of them is a connection to this place, and to be accepted by its people is to be accepted by the land itself. It soothes her to know she is wanted. Natsume did not want her. The exorcist who imprisoned her did not want her. Natori—

He did want her, but in the end he is not forests and fields full of grateful youkai. He is not sunlight, and he is not freedom.

He gave her purpose when she needed it badly.

Now she has chosen her own purpose.

She will not think of him.

Instead she solemnly shadows Tanuma as he brings a bun weekly to the small shrine at the back of the temple, waits until he’s left, and eats it. She is still growing more powerful with each offering she accepts. She does begin to wonder why Tanuma needs guarding at all, though; he returns home every day and quietly does homework or chores, and goes to sleep at a very reasonable time. His most pressing problem seems to be frequent headaches. Two weeks after she arrived in Yatsuhara, on one of Natsume’s visits, she asks what precisely she is guarding him from.

“Oh! I didn’t tell you?” Natsume looks abashed. “He’s very sensitive to… I suppose Nyanko-sensei calls it youki. As far as I understand it, if a powerful ayakashi is nearby, or a large number of normal ones, it makes him ill.”

“Who are you talking to, Natsume?”

They both look around. Tanuma has emerged from the temple.

“Hiiragi, the guardian, came to ask me something.”

“Oh! Thank you for your hard work, Hiiragi-san.” Tanuma bows. It’s rather bemusing.

“He leaves offerings in the abandoned shrine every week,” she tells Natsume. “Very diligent.”

“Hiiragi says thanks for the offerings,” Natsume translates, incorrectly.

“Would it be wise for me to avoid the temple?” she asks.

Natsume looks at her thoughtfully. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Tanuma, but you can’t feel anything right now, can you?”

“From Hiiragi-san? Um, I don’t know. It feels kind of nice, actually. I had a headache before I came out here.”

“Spend more time in the fresh air,” Hiiragi advises. It makes Natsume laugh, which is the best she can really hope for.

“You sound like a grandmother, Hiiragi. But I don’t think you need to avoid Tanuma. It seems like what you have isn’t youki.”

“It’s like Ponta,” says Tanuma. “He doesn’t make me sick either. You’re really more a god than a youkai.”

“If you’ll excuse us, we have curry to make. Come on, Tanuma.”

Hiiragi has no idea who Ponta might be, but it does make a sort of sense. Youki is not protective energy at all—it’s more like a warning. She leaves the temple, walking north, because Tanuma is never safer than when Natsume is with him.

After a while she feels a presence shadowing her. She doesn’t remark on it; many of the ayakashi in the area are shy, content just to get a glimpse of her. For this reason, it’s a little unexpected when one of Natsume’s drunk friends (well, _friends_ is dubious) appears leaning against a tree ahead of her. Her name is… Hinoe. Hinoe looks at Hiiragi from half closed eyes, delicately lifting her pipe from her mouth to blow out a cloud of smoke.

“So we have a new guardian,” she says. She smiles like a fox.

“As I recall, you were the one who suggested I guard Yatsuhara,” says Hiiragi.

“Indeed I was. And you’re doing a splendid job. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen such a strong guardian spirit.”

Hiiragi tilts her head just slightly, confused. The last time they met Hinoe was barely concealing her hostility, apparently intent on interrogating Hiiragi, perhaps to determine her intentions toward Natsume. Now she is concealing her hostility considerably more carefully. But Hiiragi has little patience for games, especially those whose rules she doesn’t know. “What is it you want?” she asks.

“To congratulate you! And, well, it’s always useful to be on good terms with the guardian of the land one lives in.”

“…Yes.”

“Would you mind if I walk with you?”

“It’s everyone’s forest. I won’t stop you from walking where you want.”

Hinoe adopts a long-suffering look and takes another drag on her pipe as she falls into step with Hiiragi. After a while she says, “How does Yatsuhara compare to your old mountain? I find it has its charms.”

“I am protecting humans now as well. Those who live here, and not just the occasional traveler.”

“I hate humans,” says Hinoe lightly. “Especially men. They really don’t understand anything about reciprocity.” All the humans Hiiragi has met are, technically, men, aside from Nanase. Somehow she feels that it is unfair to include Natsume in their ranks. But she doesn’t have any reply.

Hinoe seems to be one of those people who can’t stand silence. She continues to question Hiiragi and points out notable features of the landscape such as very old trees, a shrine that is rumored to have a god sealed inside of it, and a lake that is allegedly very pretty at sunset. Hinoe is so enthusiastic about the lake, in fact, that she somehow knocks the glittering pin out of her hair and flings it out several meters into the water.

“Oh! My poor pin!” she says. “Hiiragi-san, I don’t suppose you could get it back for me?”

Hiiragi thinks for a moment, and then crouches down by the water’s edge. “Excuse me,” she says. “Would anyone be willing to do me a favor?”

Almost immediately three youkai surface to look at her. “Hiiragi-san!” says one who appears to be an eel. “Anything I can do for you I will!”

“Let me do it,” hisses the catfish next to it.

“I’d appreciate all your help,” Hiiragi says, to forestall an argument. “Hinoe-san has lost her hairpin in the lake. Could you find it?”

“Sure!”

The three of them dive down, and Hiiragi stands up to wait. Just half a minute later the catfish comes up with the pin in its mouth, and waits, awkwardly, until Hinoe realizes that it’s waiting for her.

“Thank you,” Hinoe says, glancing between the catfish and Hiiragi.

“No problem,” says the catfish, and it disappears again.

Hinoe starts drying the pin off on her sleeve. Hiiragi can hear her muttering: “Really, they’re polar opposites. Nothing alike. Why on earth do I…”

But she falls silent when she catches Hiiragi’s eye.


End file.
